Fenland Citizen journalist Rebekah Chilvers: ‘My birth experience was far from our plan, but meeting our baby was incredible’

In her first monthly column, Rebekah Chilvers talks through her birth experience. There may be details that some people find upsetting.

It’s hard to know where to start when talking about the last month or so since I went on maternity leave.

My life has been altered forever after the arrival of our beautiful daughter Clara early this month.

But before she made her entrance into the world, we had a couple of weeks of wondering if she would come ahead of her due date.

Spoiler alert - she didn’t! Before maternity leave, I’d said I wanted her to come after a couple of weeks off, but when it came to it, I found the wait and the unknown nature of everything harder than I had expected. I kept telling people that I wished I had a crystal ball to see into the future.

As it happens, it’s probably for the best that I hadn’t got one, as I’m not sure that it would’ve helped me.

The day before I was due, I was offered what’s known as a membrane sweep, a procedure that my midwife carried out in the hope that it might encourage labour to start. Two days later, I had another.

After the second sweep, I was told that my cervix was more dilated, but that the baby’s head was higher up than before due to the volume of my ‘waters’.

At this point, we had a decision to make, as my partner Lee and I were told that we could choose to have my waters broken and get my labour started.

At first, we decided against it, but we had a change of heart and were able to go into the hospital for this to be done a couple of days later.

A doctor carried out this procedure, and it was at this time that we discovered that our birth plan - which in an ideal world would have involved a birthing pool - was not to be.

That was because some meconium - a baby’s first poo - was found in my waters, which the doctor told us meant that she had been stressed at some point in the womb.

The baby and I would have to be constantly monitored until she was born, which meant a water birth was off the cards, and I couldn’t even leave the delivery room.

Also, the clock was now ticking as I had two hours for my contractions to begin. If they didn’t, then I would have to be put on a hormone drip for oxytocin - the ‘love’ hormone which helps to bring on labour - to be pumped through my veins.

Contractions didn’t begin by themselves, and so I was also hooked up to the hormone drip via a cannula.

By this time, it was late evening, and I had already been under the care of two lovely midwives, Chloe and Louisa - Louisa would be with us for more than 12 hours in total.

Although I wasn’t able to have the atmosphere that I had envisioned, both of these midwives helped to make me as comfortable as possible, and provided us with calming, colourful lights, a speaker to play some relaxing music and birthing aids such as a ball to bounce on.

As for pain relief, I had been made aware of all the options, and when it came to it, I used a TENS machine I had bought (which passes weak electrical currents to your nerves), gas and air, and I also had two morphine injections to take the edge off the contractions when they did arrive and as they became more intense.

At first, the hours seemed to pass fairly quickly, but as time went on, I found myself clock-watching and hoping that I would soon be told I could start pushing.

But it wasn’t until 7am the following morning that my cervix had fully dilated and I was ready to try to bring our little girl into the world.

Louisa told me that she was almost at the end of her shift, but that she hoped the baby would arrive by the time she would be leaving at 8.30am. Unfortunately, this was not the case, and Louisa handed over to Emma and student midwife Phebe.

All the while, I kept pushing and was given lots of words of encouragement by all of the midwives - and it seemed like it could only be a matter of moments before our baby was here.

But after two hours of trying, things suddenly became serious. Doctors came into the room, with one telling me I now had two options - that they deliver the baby via forceps in the delivery room and I could use gas and air, or she could be delivered via forceps in theatre, where an anaesthetist would administer a spinal block. Having been told the second option would be safer, this is what we chose.

Emma warned me that going into theatre would be reminiscent of Holby City due to the number of health professionals in scrubs, and she wasn’t wrong. It was also the brightest and most serious setting I had been in.

Once I’d been given the spinal, it could only have been a matter of 10-20 minutes before Clara was born, and we found out the reason that she had needed all that extra help. Her cord was wrapped around her neck three times and once around her body, which acted like a bungee rope and pulled her back whenever I pushed.

After the fairly traumatic nature of her birth, we were just overwhelmed with love and relief when we met her.

The next 24 and a bit hours consisted of more checks, support with feeding, a hearing test for Clara and more - as well as some immediate family members meeting her for the first time - while we stayed in hospital.

We left the next day, and now - more than two weeks later - we continue to learn about our newborn every day and both Clara and I are recovering from a life-changing event.

While the birth experience ended up not looking like what we had hoped or imagined, we are so grateful to all of the healthcare professionals who looked after us at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital and ensured that our daughter was born safely.

By the time I next update you all in this column, we’ll hopefully be a bit more settled into life with our newborn - with a little bit more sleep if we’re lucky!